Photos by Ed Piper
Photos by Ed Piper
By Ed Piper
A lasting mental image of Payton Smith, former La Jolla High sprinter now competing for the University of Michigan: Viking soccer coach Austin Mobley inserted Smith as a designated striker early in the second half of a game her junior year in high school.
Payton received the ball beyond the midway point of the field, toward the left. She had one defender on her, plus the goalie. With her elite sprint speed, she went around the defender as if her foe were planted in cement. Now it was one-on-one with the poor goalie, waiting in the shadows. More sprinting, a quick kick, and Smith had done her assignment--score a goal.
She was removed right after the goal. It was a nice warmup and jog for her--the rest of us, mere mortals looking on. On the La Jolla sideline, her teammates were whooping it up: "Way to go, Payton." "Good job." They saw her as the friend and teammate she had been for a while.
Fast-forward two, nearly three years: The ASB president has moved on to her future and greener pastures. She is back in San Diego for the summer after a good start to her collegiate track career with the Wolverines.
Her sprints coach at Michigan, Steve Rajewsky, entering his 13th year, says, "(Payton) was a very highly-recruited high school athlete."
"She's (already) in the top four in (Wolverine) school history in the indoor and outdoor 400."
As a freshman, running on the school-record-setting 4x400 relay team--the foursome clocked 3:29 in the first round of the NCAA prelims in Eugene, Oregon this spring--and rating in the "upper echelon" of runners at UMich, in Rajewsky's words, Payton adjusted well to the move from San Diego to Ann Arbor.
She had a hiccup at the end of the winter indoor season early in 2025. "She fell," related Rajewsky. "That took a little bit of time to get back in the saddle."
Finally, recovering her confidence, "she ran 52.9 at the end of the outdoor season. That was in the ballpark of where she was running before (the fall)."
A sign of growth during Smith's freshman year at the private institution was that she was running faster times than she had in her highly successful senior year at La Jolla, when she won the state meet.
In her sprints coach's view, her adjustment to the snows of Michigan, being away from San Diego, came easier because her family had previously moved to La Jolla from Albuquerque, where her father served as a Division 3 basketball coach.
Rajewsky also knows Olivia, Payton's younger sister who followed her into the ASB presidency spot this past year, having served in her "cabinet" when the elder Smith daughter served as president.
"I wouldn't say (Payton) is quieter," said Rajewsky when told by a reporter that his only contact with her was on meet days at meet sites. There's not much time to chat when you aren't familiar with the person, and the athlete is preparing to run her events.
"(Payton) has a passion for people." "I'm excited to be part of her (journey). I'm excited for year two. You have so much more knowledge (after a year in college).
"Ignorance is bliss (the first year)."
Her major is undeclared. She is dabbling in different subjects, from "education to business to communications."
"This year she'll have to narrow it down."
Janice Diane Wiser showed a little humor in filling out a questionnaire for her AAU coach, Tracy Sundlun. "I had each athlete fill one of these out," he remembered Mon., July 7, in a conversation at his home with a reporter.
Under a question, "What type of training have you had in the past (describe)?", the then-17-year-old typed, "Brutal, Abused, Man Handled" (cq) (all in capitals, as the whole form was, questions and answers).
"I'd already coached Janice a while," said Sundlun, now living in Santee. "I see some humor in that."
Then, under the next and final question on the questionnaire, "Any comments, problems, desires, other school activities, etc., which would aid me in coaching you?", the teen typed, "Yea, I want to have a baby (smile)."
Wiser listed her height as 5'7". She wrote her street shoe size as "8 - 8 1/2", spike as "7 1/2". She expressed an interest in trying "high jump, discus,...", in addition to running the sprints and relays.
Janice's response this week, Mon., July 7: "...I thought to myself, 'Why should I complete this form?'", she said about being asked to complete the form. "So I wrote silly responses."
Tracy Sundlun went into a reverie about his days traveling through the Pacific Northwest with retired NBA great Wilt Chamberlain, the formation of the SLO Track Club and La Jolla Track Club--and much, much more.
How did we get here? We wouldn't have had La Jolla senior Janice Wiser, who seemingly popped out of nowhere (she came from Washington, D.C.), dominating the sprints at the 1974 CIF San Diego Section meet, and a week later the CIF State Meet in Bakersfield.
Wiser finished the state meet second in the team standings as a one-girl team from LJHS. (The Vikings, under Coach Chuck Boyer, didn't yet have a girls team. Janice had to work out with the boys.)
"It wasn't that I selected the girls in the state meet," recalled Sundlun, a wunderkind among coaches, a savant who began coaching before he matriculated in college at Georgetown.
"(From the La Jolla Track Club, an AAU club) we had the athletes enter for their high schools. It wasn't about being greedy. We didn't think of the state title."
Janice won the 100 and 220. Another girl ran the 440, which Wiser also had trained in. "If I hadn't spread the chance to run in the state meet around, she would have won the state meet," he said, smiling.
But Sundlun's involvement went way beyond coaching Janice Wiser. Wiser went off to run at SDSU right after her one year at La Jolla High, and Tracy continued his activities with the La Jolla Track Club.
"In 1974, after Janice moved on, Wilt became the club sponsor. We changed the name to Wilt's Wonder Women. Essentially, Chamberlain funded the program. He signed over the check he received from Sports Illustrated for announcing his retirement from basketball (through an exclusive in the magazine)."
Sundlun, of average height, must have been quite a sight alongside the former NBA center, who measured 7'1" and weighed 275 in his playing days. That later went up to 350 pounds as he played professional volleyball in the short-lived International Volleyball Association.
Wilt also dabbled in track, in which, Sundlun maintains, he competed in multiple events besides the triple jump. His athleticism enabled him to score 100 points in an NBA game, the only player to do that. During halftime, it was reported, he would amaze teammates by eating entire meals, including several fruit pies to top it off, before heading back out to play the second half.
The track coach, Sundlun, said on their motorhoming trip through the Pacific Northwest in 1973, everyone knew and was drawn to the magnetic personality of Chamberlain. "I'm completely lost (driving the motorhome) in the hinterlands. Wilt is asleep in the back of the motorhome. We come to a (draw)bridge that is up because a boat is passing through. There's a knock on the door. 'Is Wilt Chamberlain here?' I said, 'Do I look like Wilt?' How they knew Wilt was in the motorhome..."
From all appearances, Payton Smith--the California state champ in the 400 meters in 2024 from La Jolla High School--is progressing well in her college career at the University of Michigan.
Records show that Smith, who also served as ASB president during her senior year for the Vikings a year ago, competed well in both the indoor winter season, and the outdoor spring season for the nationally-recognized Wolverines in the last few months.
Smith, whose younger sister Olivia also ran sprints for LJHS, was named an Honorable Mention All-American as a college freshman this spring for her performance on the UM 4x400 relay team. (The team placed 19th in 3:33.75 at the NCAA Outdoor Championships June 11-14.) If she continues on this upward path, her relay participation this season will end up being a minor footnote in her career.
Payton also ran in the 400-meter, 200-meter, 4x400-meter relay, 4x100-meter relay in the spring.
In the indoor season, she won the 400 at the Michigan Invitational Feb. 8, the fourth-best mark in program history. Similarly, outdoors, the elder Smith ran a career-best 52.94 in the 400, the number-four mark in UM's history, for 17th place at the Tiger Paw Invitational Feb. 14-15.
Olivia Smith, who served in ASB government under her sister, was then elected ASB president for 2024-2025 at La Jolla High. The two are the first and only African-Americans to serve as student body presidents at the seaside public-school campus. The school was founded in 1922.
On meet days, at meets, Olivia was the much more outgoing of the two sisters with this reporter. She smiled and greeted me, as warmups on the infield at Edwards Stadium began. I think Payton had a little more media attention her senior year, and probably dealt with that by being a little more reserved.
By the way, Payton was named to the All-Academic League all four years of her high school career for the Vikings.
By Ed Piper
When AAU track coach Tracy Sundlun first spied young Janice Wiser, a sprinter, he knew he saw something special.
"A guy in a mixed race tried to muscle her. She was running in a relay," recalled Sundlun in an interview Wed., July 2. "She just walloped him, and sent him into the infield."
The almost-as-young Tracy, only four years older than the 16-year-old Wiser, recognized her as unusual. "You didn't fall down like Mary Decker (a distance runner in the Olympics years later)," I told her later.
A chain of events was unleashed: The Washington, D.C. coach recruited Janice, a sophomore in high school in Maryland; successfully spoke to her parents about moving to the West Coast to run for an AAU team in San Luis Obispo; and the move was made, followed a year later by a relocation to La Jolla, where Janice won both sprints in the CIF State Meet in Spring 1974.
Sundlun, many years later living in San Diego, says modestly of his young runner's accomplishments: "Great athletes make great coaches."
Janice Wiser Pope, now happily married for 49 years and living in Spring Valley with her husband Robert, remembers Tracy as a "great coach", but her recollection of that moment in that AAU relay 53 years ago, is quite different.
"Tracy uses colorful language," she said when told of Sundlun's description of the incident.
"I, honest to God, didn't do anything to be aggressive," she protested. "I was focused on staying in my lane and handing the baton off."
"We bumped each other, and he fell off the track."
She recalled, "I felt the contact, but I don't remember the contact (specifically)."
"It was a girl-boy thing, you know," she said. Girl runners were not allowed to run in high school yet, and she was competing in AAU independent of any interscholastic competition. "My coach at the time was generous and let me run in the relay."
After the move to the West Coast and her insertion in the CIF San Diego Section meet representing La Jolla High in Spring 1974, Wiser said she didn't have to deal with any of the noise that opposing coaches were making, that she was a "ringer" who didn't even compete with a girls track team at La Jolla High under Coach Chuck Boyer (Boyer had her practice with the boys).
"Coach Boyer and Tracy handled all of that (the noise)," she said.
On Sundlun talking to her parents and asking them to allow her to move 3,000 miles away before her junior year in high school without family, trusting him, Janice says now, "I was amazed that my parents said yes."
Also, "I was scared." This was a big change in her life, a big move, centered around running for an AAU club in San Luis Obispo.
